The Privileged Planet Book and Website Released

For centuries scientists and philosophers have marveled at an eerie coincidence, namely that the laws of physics seem precisely "fine-tuned" for the existence of complex life.

Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, authors of the new book, The Privileged Planet (Regnery, 2004) put forth the idea that, for some reason our Earthly location is extraordinarily well suited to allow us to peer into the heavens and discover its secrets.

Elsewhere, you might learn that Earth and its local environment provide a delicate, and probably exceedingly rare, cradle for complex life. But there's another, even more startling, fact, described in The Privileged Planet: those same rare conditions that produce a habitable planet-that allow for the existence of complex observers like ourselves-also provide the best overall place for observing.

Gonzalez and Richards make a compelling argument that contrary to the materialist idea that the universe is "pointless" (Steven Weinberg), and Earth merely "a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark," (Carl Sagan), the evidence we can uncover from our Earthly home points to a universe that is designed for life, and designed for discovery.

Guillermo Gonzalez, of Iowa State University and NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, holds a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Washington. Jay Richards, vice-president of Discovery Institute, holds a Ph.D with honors in philosophy and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary.